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At present there is no
vaccine to prevent the H5N1 or H1N1 influenzas. The only cure
is in short supply and of uncertain effectiveness.

And, if you get infected, you have up to a 50% chance of
dying (Avian Flu) or a much lower but still significant
danger (Swine Flu).

Need any
more encouragement to read further?

Part 2 of a 3 part series -
part 1 explains what Bird Flu is
and what the risks are and part 3 will discuss the social
problems that may occur during any type of Flu pandemic and
offers some suggestions about how to survive in a
potentially hostile, foodless and lawless world.

Have you ever been in a
situation where an ordinary common cold has been passed among
members of an office or social group or family?
Such things are regrettably commonplace.

But a cold is a passing
inconvenience. Now imagine if instead of a common cold,
the problem is H5N1 Bird Flu or H1N1 Swine Flu, evolved into a form
transferable between people.

Your chances of infection are
probably similar to catching a cold. But your chance of surviving an infection have
just dropped from the 99.99% certainty of surviving a cold down to
as low as 50% (with H5N1) or perhaps 1% - 10% (it is early days
yet with Swine Flu and its mortality rate remains unclear). To put that
another way, if there are four members of your family, and you
all get infected with Bird Flu, the chances are two of you will
die from it.

Unless you're keen for this to
occur, you need to read the following material and urgently act
on it.

Important
Disclaimer

I have no
medical qualifications and this article is not
intended as medical advice. Although I've had
physicians check the medical aspects of this article
for gross errors and inaccuracies, they too would
not want you solely relying on this article, and we
all urge you to check with your personal health care
provider and prepare a strategy best suited for your
situation.

Avoiding Infection

The best 'cure' for
influenza is simply not to get it in the first place. This
may be difficult to arrange if you have a job that places you in
close contact with lots of other people all day every day, but
in any environment, there are prudent steps you can take to
reduce your exposure and risk.

In order to avoid infection,
you need to understand how you could be infected, and then
ensure such actions do not occur.

About Flu Infections

The influenza virus needs to
be introduced in to your body through a wet surface such as your
nose or mouth (either by breathing in or eating something
containing the virus), or, less likely, through your eyes, any
cuts, or, ahem, sexual organs.

Human flu is primarily
spread when a person coughs, ejecting a fine mist of infected
droplets of moisture into the air around them. These
gradually settle and contaminate surfaces in the general area
where the person coughed.

Victims
either inhale the droplets or transfer the virus from a
contaminated surface and become infected themselves.

Think carefully about all
the ways this can happen. For example, maybe you get these droplets on your hands and then rub your
eyes with your hands. Or maybe a person with contaminated
hands then passes you a pen, transferring some infection onto
the pen, which is then transferred to your hand (a physician I
know always uses his own pen, everywhere, for signing credit
card forms and everything else, never accepting someone else's
pen for this purpose). You next
reach for a piece of food, eat it, and ingest the virus.

Another often overlooked
source of potential contamination is money - paper money and
coins, all of which may be handled by very many people.

People are generally
contagious from about one day before displaying obvious symptoms
through to three to seven days after becoming sick.
Children can sometimes remain contagious for more than a week.

A person can start to
exhibit symptoms of the flu between one and four days after
being exposed to it. Usually the flu appears after about
two days.

Bird flu is passed between
birds in additional ways. Contamination is present
in their feces and other excretions, and is extremely virulent.
There is enough virus in a single gram (1/28th of an ounce) of
contaminated manure to infect one million birds, and it will
survive in contaminated manure for at least three months.

The virus can survive at
room temperature in water for up to four days, and more than 30
days at or below freezing (one
source suggests it survives years at -70°C).
Another source, referring to H5N2 viruses, says they can
live for weeks on surfaces such as clothing, vehicles, and
equipment.

The virus can be killed by
heat - 56°C for three hours or 60°C for
half an hour. Strong disinfectants such as fomalin and
iodine based compounds will also kill it.

Steps to
Avoid Infection

If an
epidemic or pandemic does materialize, then you need to consider
the following cautionary steps.

Try to
avoid being anywhere with high concentrations of other people.
As much as possible, keep off public transport, avoid
sports and other events where large groups are brought together,
and consider taking your children out of school.

Schools
may promise, as my daughter's school is currently (30 April
2009) to keep a careful watch on the situation and to send
students and staff home if they appear unwell, but when you keep
in mind that people are infectious for a day or so before they
start to exhibit symptoms, by the time a school sends one person
home, he/she has already infected maybe ten or twenty or more
other students, and by the time those 10 - 20 or more students
have exhibited symptoms, they have infected 100 - 400 other
students.

If you
can work from home, do so.

Avoid
contact with surfaces that might have been contaminated - which
means just about everything outside of your own controlled
environment (ie house). When you must have contact with
potentially contaminated surfaces, you should be fastidious
about
washing your hands.

Consider also carrying some alcoholic type hand wet-wipes and
hand sanitizers. Look for sanitizers that are about 65% or
more alcohol, anything less than that may be ineffective against
bacteria, and it seems viruses require a stronger concentration.

And,
talking about eating, you should avoid eating any food you
haven't prepared yourself. You have no way of knowing what
has happened in the kitchen of a restaurant to the food you're
being served, and if a Flu outbreak occurs, the chance of
the food being infected and the virus not being killed in the
cooking process becomes measurably significant.

You
might also want to be careful about eating cold fruits, salads,
and other foods that aren't thoroughly washed prior to eating.
Who knows what might have happened to that head of lettuce prior
to it being served on your plate. Poultry manure is widely
used as a fertilizer - your nice fresh lettuce may have been
lightly dusted with contaminated poultry manure.

When
cooking poultry products, wash them thoroughly before
preparation, and cook them thoroughly. The recommended
'doneness' temperature for poultry is about 82°C/180°F, and for
safety, you should ensure the entire poultry pieces reach this
temperature and hold it for 5 - 10 minutes.

Needless to say, don't share food or eating utensils with other
people.

At some
point, it may be necessary to start to worry about water
supplies, too. If a bird should defecate into a water
reservoir while flying overhead, and remembering that a single
gram of contaminated feces has enough virus to infect a million
birds, there may be a chance of viral contamination entering the
drinking water. Check with your water supplier to see what
steps they take to eliminate all viruses from their water
supply.

A
related issue is to avoid swimming in closed areas of water.

A
slightly more publicly obvious measure is to wear a respiratory
mask while out in public. This was made compulsory in some
areas during the Spanish Flu pandemic, and is a sensible if
slightly embarrassing precaution.

Our
projection is that respiratory masks will quickly become in very
short supply. For that reason, and because they have a
very long shelf life, why not buy some now.

You
might also wish to stop shaking people's hands - this too became
normal behavior during the Spanish Flu pandemic.

If
you're unable to avoid crowded locations, consider putting on a
pair of neutral glasses. They won't affect your vision,
but will give you discreet protection against infection entering
your eyes.

One
last suggestion. Be healthy. Exercise more, eat
well, get enough sleep, and try and maintain a good healthy
lifestyle. Healthy people have more natural resistance to
infection than unhealthy people.

Get
regular Flu Vaccination and
Bacterial Pneumonia Immunization

A
regular Flu shot at present won't protect you against either
H1N1 Swine Flu or H5N1 Avian
Flu, but it will protect you against this season's regular flu
and by reducing the risk of you getting regular flu, helps you
to stay healthy and less vulnerable to these special Flus.

Similarly, a pneumonia immunization (Pneumovax) won't reduce
your chance of getting Flu at all, but this vaccination may
help reduce the possibility of pneumonia type complications if
you do get Flu. A pneumonia immunization gives you
protection for ten years, so it is probably a good thing to do
anyway.

Surviving Infection

Is it Flu or Something Else

So you've got the snuffles.
Is it Flu, or merely a common cold? It is
important to quickly understand which virus you have, because if
it is the flu you have only a very limited time period to start
a course of Tamiflu to combat the infection.

Here's a
helpful page that compares and contrasts the sometimes
similar and sometimes different symptoms of the two viruses, and
here's a slightly different list of comparative symptoms.

If the worst comes to worst
and you do come down with Bird or Swine Flu, you'll want to urgently take
a ten tablet (two a day for five days is the recommended dose,
although some studies suggest stronger doses or for longer time)
course of Tamiflu.

Tamiflu is presently the
best choice of drug to take to combat Swine Flu, and somewhat
less so for Bird Flu, and to be
effective, you must start taking the pills within two days of
symptoms appearing.

Some
recent studies are suggesting Tamiflu is less than 100%
effective, but, perfect or not, it is the best and only course
of action open to you. Update 2009 :
Tamiflu's general effectiveness has massively diminished in the
last four years, but it is still of some use with some Flu
strains.

If you do have Flu,
people around you should also consider taking courses of Tamiflu
to protect against being similarly infected. When taking
Tamiflu to protect against an infection rather than to fight a
current infection, the dosage reduces to only one tablet a day,
for a minimum of seven days, and in general beyond that for as
long as you wish to protect yourself against the possibility of
infection.

So why not simply start
taking a Tamiflu tablet every day during any outbreak that might
occur? Because the drug is expensive, and it might
not be covered by your health insurance. But, more
importantly, because there probably won't be enough available
for everyone to do this.

Which leads to the next very
important suggestion.

Buy a Supply of Tamiflu Now

Tamiflu can only be sold (in
the US) with a doctor's prescription. Go see your friendly
family doctor and see how much Tamiflu he is willing to
prescribe to you now.

You might care to suggest to
him he prescribes each of the people in your family a 42 pill
course (and because the medicine comes in strips of ten, he
might therefore choose to round up the quantity to 50 each) as a
prophylaxis (preventative). This might be something your
health insurer might okay, but even if you have to pay for the
Tamiflu out of pocket, it may be money very well spent.

Tamiflu pills cost slightly
more than $8 each in local pharmacies in the Seattle area, and
about $6 each mail order.

Don't use them as a
preventative, but keep them for if they're needed. A 42
pill per person supply would give you a generous quantity to use
if any of your family did get infected, and leave you with extra
in case of reinfection (it is not known if a Tamiflu defeated
infection gives you immunity against reinfection or not).

Get these pills now.
Not tomorrow. Ring for an appointment with your doctor today.
Two local pharmacies told me yesterday and today (28/29 Sept 05)
that they are now out of Tamiflu stocks, although both hope to
get more in soon. Plainly, supplies are becoming hard to
obtain.

And there are various
mutterings being made in some countries to make it illegal for
ordinary citizens to buy and stockpile Tamiflu, because if
everyone tried to do this, there'd be insufficient to go around.

There absolutely is
insufficient Tamiflu, already. Your choice is either to be
optimistically noble, and hope that, if/when you need some,
you'll be able to quickly get a supply, or to be selfish and get
an adequate supply for yourself now, while you know you can.

Without a doubt, if everyone
rushed to order Tamiflu today, there'd be none left for
genuinely needy cases. On the other hand, no-one will
thank you for your selflessness, least of all your family and
dependents, if you don't get a supply now, subsequently get
infected and die.

So you're faced with a
difficult decision. On the one hand, if you hoard a supply
of Tamiflu, you might subsequently never need it, and deprive
someone else of the vital medicine. On the other hand, if
you don't stockpile a quantity for yourself, then you in turn
might fall victim to a shortage of supply in the future.
For sure, if you're in a 'higher risk group' of people more
susceptible to the flu, you could be understood for choosing to
be prudent now.

Tamiflu has up to a five
year shelf life - recent stocks (Sept 05) have an expiry date of May 2010,
so there's no reason to delay the purchase of the product.
Buy some now. Store the Tamiflu at warm room temperature
to give it the longest shelf life. The
manufacturer
recommends storing it as close to 77°F/25°C
as possible.

Beware of Web Suppliers of
Tamiflu

Chances are there might even
be some Google ads on this page from internet sites offering to
sell you Tamiflu. Some may be reputable, and some will
probably require you to provide a prescription. A
reputable mail order/internet store that requires a prescription
may be a bona fide way to save money on buying the drug.

But others, in third world
countries, are very much an unknown quantity. If you buy
Tamiflu from such sites, you really have no way of knowing what
you'll be getting. You don't know if it is truly Tamiflu or not,
you don't know if it is previously expired Tamiflu or still
current, and just because it is delivered in what seems to be an
official Tamiflu package doesn't mean anything.

Beware of Quack Remedies

Desperate people will try
anything in an attempt to survive a life-threatening illness,
and there are always plenty of people eager to take advantage of
such people and their unfortunate situations.

We can expect to see an
upsurge in patent medicines being offered for sale, complete
with extravagant pseudo-scientific claims. This happened
during the Spanish Flu epidemic and will almost surely happen
this time around, too.

Here's
an
example of a medication we view with extreme suspicion.
There are of course many more websites selling many more
questionable products out there. Steer well clear of them.

But be Open-Minded, Too

The medical community is
slowly (some might say reluctantly) accepting that some
alternative medicines can indeed provide cures for some
ailments. Homeopathy and acupuncture in particular are
becoming more mainstream.

But the key 'benefit' of
mainstream medication is the rigorous testing and evaluation
process it goes through. All cynical comments about
multi-national drug companies to one side, the reality is that
most medicines have been rigorously trialed and are closely
regulated by national health bodies such as the FDA. You
can close to 100% accept the claims of such medicines as being
accurate and fair.

The same is not true of
alternative medicines. There is no clear procedure to
validate alternative medicines and the claims they make.
If you can research and confirm that a specific homeopathic
remedy, for example, is generally considered by a range of
advocates to address a certain ailment, and if these claims have
been extant for extended periods of time, maybe that is of some
reassurance, but be very wary of claims that you can't find
copious additional confirmation for.

Here's
an example of a mix of science, pseudo-science, and ideas
which, if not nonsense, should at least be kindly described as
'outside the mainstream of medical thought'. But is the
product this page advocates - Sambucol - of any value? Who
only knows. In its favor, this product seems to be
inexpensive, and so you might decide to get some 'just in case'
on the basis that it almost certainly won't do any harm, and
might possibly do some good.

And here is
information on another possible preventative drug -
resveratrol.

Summary

The bad news is that Bird
and Swine
Flu can kill sizeable percentages of the people who catch these
ailments. The
good news is that, even if it spreads to be a pandemic, not
everyone will be infected, and obviously not everyone who is
infected will die.

Follow the steps above to
reduce your chance of becoming infected, and to increase your
chance of surviving if you do become infected.

Read more in Parts 1 and 3

In
Part 1 we explain what Bird Flu is
and what the risks are. Part
3 will discuss the social problems that may occur during any
type of Flu
pandemic and offers some suggestions about how to survive in a
potentially hostile, foodless and lawless world.

Important
Disclaimer

I have no
medical qualifications and this article is not
intended as medical advice. Although I've had
physicians check the medical aspects of this article
for gross errors and inaccuracies, they too would
not want you solely relying on this article, and we
all urge you to check with your personal health care
provider and prepare a strategy best suited for your
situation.

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Originally published
30 Sep 2005, last update
02 Jul 2017

You may freely reproduce or distribute this article for noncommercial purposes as long as you give credit to me as original writer.